May 20 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron
held back from discussing the tax affairs of Google Inc. during
a meeting with business leaders who included the California-based company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt.

The prime minister’s spokesman, Jean-Christophe Gray, said
that he “was not aware of any bilateral meetings” between
Cameron and Schmidt at a regular gathering with executives in
London today. Cameron explained to the gathering how he wants to
reach a global agreement to overhaul company taxes during
Britain’s presidency of the Group of Eight this year.

“The right thing to do is to pursue this tax transparency
agenda,” Gray told reporters at one of his twice-daily
briefings. “The prime minister believes companies must pay the
taxes that are due,” he said, when asked whether Cameron
thought Google should pay more tax in the U.K.

Last week, Margaret Hodge, an opposition Labour Party
lawmaker who heads Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, said
Google was “evil” because it exploited the rules and acted
unethically to minimize its tax bills.

Hodge’s parliamentary hearing with a Google executive last
week was held amid a wider international effort to get companies
to pay more tax as governments cut spending programs to curb
deficits. Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook will be
the subject of a Senate hearing on U.S. companies’ offshore tax
practices tomorrow. Apple uses a similar strategy to the one
used by Google to cut its tax liabilities.